An enormous conflict between words and deeds is prevalent today: everyone talks about freedom, democracy, justice, human rights, about peace and saving the world from nuclear apocalypse; and at the same time, everyone, more or less, consciously or unconsciously, serves those values and ideals only to the extent necessary to serve himself and his "worldly" interests, personal interests, group interests, power interests, property interests, and state or great-power interests. . . . So the power structures apparently have no other choice than to sink deeper into this vicious maelstrom, and contemporary people apparently have no other choice than to wait around until the final inhibition drops away. But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? Responsibility cannot be preached but only borne, and the only possible place to begin is with oneself. —Vaclav Havel More about this quote Tags: justice truth power freedom peace words democracy change responsibility talk values Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and this will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Frederick Douglass More about this quote Tags: justice power wrong tyranny resistance demands submission Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just — his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing. —John Steinbeck More about this quote Tags: justice wisdom learning intelligence safety gods childhood growth lying parental infallibility Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
No one who has stood for high values — love, truth, justice — has died being able to declare victory, once and for all. If we embrace values like those, we need to find ways to stand in the gap for the long haul, and be prepared to die without having achieved our goals. —Parker J. Palmer More about this quote Tags: justice truth love time death goals victory Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I'm tired of waiting. It's time for us to find our own voice, to do our own organizing, to push forward on reform, to push forward on issues of economic justice, and to make the United States of America, this good country, even better. —Paul Wellstone More about this quote Tags: justice action USA waiting better Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Every crime is born of necessity. If you want less crime, you must change the conditions. Poverty makes crime. Want, rags, crusts, failure, misfortune — all these awake the wild beast in man, and finally he takes, and takes contrary to law, and becomes a criminal. And what do you do with him? You punish him. Why not punish a man for having consumption? The time will come when you will see that that is just as logical. —Robert Ingersoll More about this quote Tags: justice poverty crime logic punishment Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is. —Isaac Rosenfeld More about this quote Tags: justice learning suffering Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Justice is open to all — like the Ritz Hotel. —Sir James Mathew More about this quote Tags: justice wealth Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Question: How can justice be secured in Athens? Solon: If those who are not injured feel as indignant as those who are. —Solon More about this quote Tags: justice injury indignance Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Justice is like the kingdom of God — it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning. —George Eliot More about this quote Tags: justice God yearning Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threaten to destroy the whole race of [humankind] and the world with [it] . . . . I make monastic silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists, and agitators, and when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my church can ever be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also, and perhaps against these most of all. —Thomas Merton More about this quote Tags: justice war humanity politics life silence rejection church crime protest faith lies racism tyranny Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
As you press on with justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapons of love. —Martin Luther King Jr. More about this quote Tags: justice love dignity discipline Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation. —Mary McCarthy More about this quote Tags: justice society Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The wheels of justice . . . they're square wheels. —Barbara Corcoran More about this quote Tags: justice progress Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. "No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first — verdict afterwards. —Lewis Carroll More about this quote Tags: justice Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email